What is it?

The sportiest version of the biggest member of the MINI range – the new Cubman.

Yes, it’s an estate – but be in no doubt this member of BMW’s premium small car company is aiming to take sales from established premium hatch rivals such as the Audi A3, Mercedes A-Class and Volkswagen Golf with  distinctive design, spacious interior and it’s still good to drive.

What’s hot?

• Thought the MINI range couldn’t get any bigger than the five-door Countryman crossover? Well you were wrong! Like the rest of the current MINI range, the new Clubman has grown. It might look like the rest of the F-Generation MINIs from the front, but at almost 4,300mm long and 1,800mm wide, the Clubman is 270mm longer and 73mm wider than the biggest hatch – the F55, five-door hatch.

• The last MINI Clubman was a quirky design, with twin rear doors and that controversial ‘Clubdoor’ fitted to the wrong side of the car to be of any use – the right hand side. With the new Clubman’s extra length, the biggest MINI now gets a proper set of rear doors – although those twin rear doors remain. Access to the rear is excellent and when you get in the back, there’s more than enough room for two adults to travel in the back in comfort – but a third in the middle might not be so lucky!
• As we said, the twin rear boot doors at the back of the Clubman remain and like the last model they’re beautifully engineered. Go for the costly (£2,785), but high-value and recommended Chili pack and Comfort Access is fitted as standard. This means you just have to waggle your foot under the bumper and the boot doors will automatically open. When the doors eventually open, it’s easy to spot another positive of the extra 100mm of wheelbase – the bigger boot! Seats up and there’s 360-litres, fold them down and the space increases to 1,250 litres – similar to what you get in a Golf.
• On the outside, the good news is that the new Clubman still looks like a MINI. This means that at the front, there’s the same circular lights and grille treatment as the rest of the Cooper S current F-Generation of MINI hatches. The extra length is obvious, but we think MINI’s designers have been quite clever with how they’ve managed to hide the new estate’s extra width, with some clever surface detailing of the clamshell bonnet and its extra non-working vent.

• Other clever Clubman design touches include the aggressive working air vents in the front airdam around the foglights. They channel the air around the sides of this MINI via a set of matching vents on the arch and some metal sculpting in the A-panels and front doors.
• On top of the Clubman’s curvy roofline, apart from the rear doors, other design highlights are the distinctive rear light clusters that are mounted horizontally across the rear of this big MINI estate.
• Move inside and instantly the Clubman feels more grown up and even higher quality than we’ve already seen on the F56 and F55 hatches. To go with the upmarket feel, the Clubman gets its own dashboard design and centre console. There’s also more surprise and delight to please business buyers with a hand-stitched leather steering wheel, standard sat-nav and an electric parking brake fitted to a MINI for the first time. The optional leather trim was particularly classy too.
• Standard equipment is impressive on all Clubmans, for example sat-nav is fitted as standard on all models.
• On top of rear and luggage space improvements, the long wheelbase means that the new Clubman offers ride comfort never experienced in a MINI before – even on the big 18-inch wheels of our test car. Our Clubman was fitted with the optional adaptive suspension with three modes. Most comfortable in our opinion is mid mode. Most dynamic, the sports.
• MINIs sell on their driving dynamics and although the new Clubman is the biggest yet, offering ride comfort never seen in a MINI before, this has not totally been at the expense of the handling. The steering remains pleasingly sharp and precise, plus it’s still a tidy handler too – with body roll kept to a minimum and plenty of grip on our twisty test route.